The countdown continues: OHB team working at full steam on next milestone for the asteroid sensor Hera

Bremen, 12. June 2023. Working under pressure is for the OHB team involved in the asteroid sensor their normal everyday agenda. A countdown clock on the Hera team corridor makes it clearer every day that the schedule is tight. But the team does not let this perturb them. Now, the next milestone is coming up, where many steady hands are needed: Mating is on the agenda in July, when the Hera platform will be united with the drive module. Project manager Dr. Stefan Voegt would certainly like to turn back the countdown sometimes: “A launch window scheduled for the project for October was rather ambitious from the very beginning, because it gives us just four years to develop, build, test and launch the campaign. It’s a good thing that we are a super team which can manage to keep the schedule. Over the past 10 to 15 years, we have accumulated an enormous amount of experience in satellite construction, also in terms of planning and implementation. We are now benefiting from this know-how of our team in Hera.“

Hera is the second part of the Mission AIDA (Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment), a mission jointly conducted by NASA and the European Space Agency ESA, the first part of which DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) has already carried out a collision impact manoeuvre on Didymos/Dimorphos. The second part is the European sensor Hera, for which OHB is the prime contractor for design and development. Hera shall analyse the exact effects of the DART impact.